


guessing games

by hoosierbitch



Category: White Collar
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:20:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal writes coded messages on his lovers' bodies as they sleep and then slips out before morning. When they wake up, they have to figure out what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	guessing games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daria234](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Daria234).



> Sorry this is late, darling! I hope you like it! Big thanks to all the folks at [](http://community.livejournal.com/whitecollarswap/profile)[**whitecollarswap**](http://community.livejournal.com/whitecollarswap/) for putting together such a wonderful way to pass hiatus.

With Moz, it had been a game. A competition, a dare, a challenge. About half the time Moz woke up before he’d even finished writing and threatened Neal with new and dire fates if he ever did it again.

He did it almost every night. He wrote in different languages with different ciphers from different eras. Moz always figured them out. Sometimes he wrote lines of poetry. Mostly Ginsberg – he wrote Kerouac once, but Moz had threatened castration if he did that again. Sometimes Johnny Cash, or lines from operas they’d seen - occasionally the names of paintings he’d forged.

It didn’t really matter how he said it. It just mattered that Moz kept letting him into his bed. It mattered that he kept Moz’s interest. It mattered that he had some way to leave Moz a message on all of the nights he couldn’t fall asleep and couldn’t bear to wait around until morning.

Neal didn’t have the words to say...to say anything to Moz about how much he meant. About how grateful Neal was. About how terrified he was of where he’d have ended up if Moz hadn't found him.

And because he didn’t have his own words he stole them from others and left them as gifts when he slipped away.

*

Peter got shot on May 20th.

And in the arm, too, which was his least favorite place to get shot. Well, except for the head. Or stomach. Or the genitals. Okay, so it could have been a lot worse, but _still_. He wasn’t happy about it.

Neither was Neal. Which made sense, because it – well, it _was_ Neal’s fault.

“It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

He sighed, and then he closed his eyes because even that slight movement made him nauseous. “No, it’s not.”

Neal didn’t believe him, which made sense. Peter was in too much pain to be convincing. And, well, he _was l_ ying.

“If I hadn’t left the van – ”

“You always leave the van.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have, this time.”

“You shouldn’t _any of the times_ , Neal.” Neal looked utterly miserable. “Don’t make a big thing out of it. Back-up will get here any minute, I’ll get to the hospital, they’ll - ” God, they’d slap a cast on it and stick him full of needles and make him stay overnight and piss off Elizabeth by not giving her enough information –

His list of things to worry about kept growing. So did the bloodstain on Neal’s shirt (which he’d taken off and wrapped around Peter’s elbow).

Then Neal kissed him.

Neal – Neal _kissed_ him.

In the hallway of a some run-down motel, ice machine buzzing in the background, the unfortunate soundtrack of a couple fucking a few rooms over – in any of the dozen scenarios he’d imagined where Neal kissed him, none of them had included stained carpets or the pain or his gun digging into the palm of his hand.

All of them had included Neal’s soft lips.

This beat all of his fantasies hands-down.

Adrenaline shot through his body, and he drew in a gasp around the gentle pressure of Neal’s mouth. Neal’s lips were tense and Peter could feel the weight of the moment pressing down on him, a new gravity taking effect with the first brush of his lips against Neal’s. A new hesitant reality where Neal’s fingers belonged in his hair, and Peter’s hand belonged on Neal’s hip, and their lips, oh, yes their lips were meant for this. To part, to play, to pulse forward hungry and impatient - a couple of seconds. Five, ten, sixty – a breath and a change in gravity and a new beginning, Neal’s lips pressing against his own. Then Neal pulled back and Peter reached forward with his injured arm and fell backwards with a hiss.

“I’m sorry,” Neal whispered.

He could hear sirens in the background. The humming of the ice machine was starting to fade. Blood loss, he was pretty sure. Neal’s face was blurring around the edges and he wanted nothing more in the world than to be able to see Neal’s eyes clearly. To know what he was thinking.

“Neal. Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He thought he felt Neal kiss him again before back-up burst into the building

When he woke up Neal was out getting coffee and there was something Russian written on his cast.

*

All of Kate’s scars were on the inside. He found them in her hesitations, her late-night confessions, found them only when she grew too tired to hide them anymore. Lying in bed all he had was smooth pale skin and Kate's voice - _I don't trust anyone. I can't. Not even you._

Old and internal and familiar.

He hated them.

Hated them because of her, for her, sometimes hated her for them. And when all that he had was her pale skin and the dark brush of her eyelashes against the velvet skin underneath her brilliant eyes, he wished that he could see them. Some proof of her pain, some evidence that she couldn't help it when she hurt him.

He'd been working with watercolors. Practicing his technique, building up his skill set, showing off for Kate. And when she fell asleep and he found dreams to be elusive, her pale skin and dark lashes keeping him awake, he pulled out the paint and the brushes and drew Kate's scars. Morse-code patterns across the creases of her fingers, down the tendons on the backs of her hands, dripping down the fragile skin of her inner forearms.

When Kate woke up and found their sheet smeared with paint, her body dripping with color, _I love you_ in dots and lines scrawled across her body - she looked for Neal, and found that he'd already gone.

*

The curves of Elizabeth’s ribs were perfect for poetry. Sappho, to be precise. The Greek letters flowed around her sides and met at her spine, traveled from there to the small of her back.

He painted them in predawn light, the paintbrush whispering a warning in a forgotten language: _morning is near_.

He hadn’t known, when they’d invited him over for dinner, whether or not he was going to be welcome to stay the night – but he’d brought his ink with him just in case. Honestly, he’d been planning on Japanese calligraphy. Thinking about Elizabeth and dreaming of kanji – around her nipples, the curves of her hips, in between her collarbones – but after she kissed him and revealed her body with a smile he knew he had been wrong.

Elizabeth was not complex, Elizabeth was not a surprise ending, Elizabeth was – simple. Straightforward. She opened her arms and loved him. She held him and didn’t ask any questions. She kissed him and he knew that he was the one she was kissing. She wasn’t kissing Peter or a fantasy or some version of Neal Caffrey she’d imagined long ago, there were no expectations or illusions or hidden intentions between them.

Elizabeth was the first person who made him want to stay until the morning.

He just – he just didn’t know how.

*

Kate was built for lies, Moz for riddles, Peter for prose, Elizabeth for poetry.

But more and more, when the night ended and Peter and Elizabeth drifted off to sleep, Neal found himself with something that he needed to say. And no idea how to say it.

*

The night after the trip to the hospital to get the cast taken off Peter woke up to the sensation of a felt-tip marker tracing over the pale skin of his forearm. Neal’s old Russian missive had been taken away, so he was writing some new message directly on Peter's body – the same way he did with Elizabeth. Something else Peter would have to puzzle over and translate and still not understand when he was finished.

He grabbed Neal’s wrist with his good hand. Felt the shift in the mattress when Neal tensed.

Something about it made him angry. Clever Neal Caffrey, holding his own private conversation that no one else could hope to keep up with. Trying to trick them, confuse them, play with them - as if this was one big game of battleships and Neal had some secret strategy he wasn’t sharing.

“Stop it.”

Neal tugged at his wrist, trying to break his hold, but Peter held on. If Neal pulled much harder, he’d risk waking Elizabeth. A car drove by outside and the headlights streaked through the window, illuminating Neal’s face for a couple of seconds.

Neal did not look smug or caught-out or condescending. Neal looked scared.

He let go of Neal’s wrist and he fell backwards, tumbling against Elizabeth’s body. She woke up quickly, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Neal stayed crouched in the curve of her body where he’d landed.

“What’s going on?”

“I was just leaving,” Neal said hurriedly. “Didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve got – there’s a painting at June’s I really should touch up.”

“At…four-thirty in the morning?”

“The life of an artist,” Neal said with a rueful grin. He dressed quickly and was out the door within minutes. Peter didn’t try to stop him.

He could see, in the red light of the alarm clock, what Neal had written on his arm. Two letters. Permanent marker. _NC_. He didn’t know what Neal was signing his name to – Peter’s broken arm, or on the whole of him, but – but either way. He remembered the soft tickle of the marker on his arm. The terror in Neal’s eyes when he’d been caught.

*

The next morning, Elizabeth decided that enough was enough. She was tired of falling asleep with two gorgeous men in her bed and waking up worrying about where one of them had run off to. She was sick of the coded messages and the chill on the right side of the bed where Neal always ended up. She wanted to know what Neal was trying to say. She wanted Neal to stay.

So she did the only thing she could think of.

She called Moz.

“Good morning, Mrs. Suit. I trust that your illicit liaison with a convicted felon is going well?” She winced. _Not_ the best opening to a conversation she’d ever heard.

“It’s, um – well. It could be going better.”

“Qu’el surprise.”

She glared at her phone. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” she bit out. And then she thought of what she’d seen of Neal and Moz together. The easy camaraderie. The tenderness that they tried and failed to hide. “We’re not hurting him.”

The pause was long, but Moz’s voice was quiet when he continued. “I know. So. What’s going on?”

“It’s – well.” She blushed. “He does this thing, where he – where, when he doesn’t stay the night, he leaves these little…”

“Messages?”

“Yes, exactly. And they’re usually in some obscure language, or in code – when he writes them on – er, _for_ Peter, they’re nearly impossible to decode.”

“What do they say?”

They said – they said beautiful things. Neal praised them and made promises to them, Neal – Neal worshipped and appreciated them. Neal thanked them.

“It’s private.”

“Huh. So, what’s the problem?”

“The _problem_ is that he writes these messages, and then he leaves. And Peter’s losing his patience, and Neal’s running out in the middle of the night more and more, and – ” Peter’d stopped decoding all the messages and Elizabeth didn’t have the resources to do it on her own and they were falling apart. Ancient Greek and other peoples’ promises crumbling between them. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I think,” Moz said. “I think – and this isn’t fact, you understand, I’m not Yoda, I don’t have all the answers – but I think – when Neal was younger, he didn't have anyone to say these things to him. I think maybe, he just - he doesn’t know how to say it.”

She didn’t want Moz to be right. She wanted it to be a quirk. A game that they could play together, a question that they just hadn’t answered yet. She didn't want it to be Neal ( _perfect, pretty, polished Neal_ ) playing at love like a lost child.

“If you hurt him,” Moz warned. “I will ruin you.”

She thought about how quiet Neal was on the rare morning he did stay over. The way he gasped sometimes when all she'd done was hug him.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

“I wish – ” Moz laughed, small and sad. “I wish you better luck than I had.”

After she hung up the phone she took a shower, got dressed, called Peter, and then went shopping.

*

He avoided them for over a week. Kept seeing the letters he’d written on Peter’s wrist ( _Peter’d been so mad, he’d crossed another line, what rule had he broken?_ ). Then one night, after a stakeout, Peter’d driven them home instead of back to the office. Or – not _home_ , not June’s, just – Peter’s house. The Burkes’ home.

They watched TV and made spaghetti and fucked on the kitchen floor while the sauce burnt, fucked again on the stairs trying to muffle each others’ sounds because all of the windows were open. Fucked again on the bed and it seemed like they were trying to take him apart, trying to kill him, punishing him with so much pleasure that his body was screaming with it. Fucked until he was too tired to move his hands, let alone go home.

And the next morning when he woke up there was a ring on his finger. Of the ring finger of his right hand. Platinum. No stones, just an elegant pattern on the band.

“Take it off.”

Neal jumped at the sound of Peter's voice, and then tried to steel his expression to hide - whatever it was that he was feeling. Of course Peter wanted the ring back. It looked wrong on his hand anyway, they’d probably slipped it on as a – a joke. Maybe he’d woken up too soon and they’d just been trying it out. Seeing what it looked like.

He was inexcusably clumsy getting the ring off. Couldn’t seem to keep his fingers steady. He couldn't stop his jaw from clenching, knew his shaking fingers betrayed him. _You don't want this anyway, Neal._

When he had the ring off he held it out to Peter but it was Elizabeth who took it from his palm. “It’s engraved,” she said. Peter turned on the bedside lamp and Elizabeth turned it in the light so that he could see the letters inside of it. “You don’t have to wear it,” she said when he didn’t respond. “You don’t even have to keep it – ”

“We love you,” Peter said. Neal closed his eyes and stayed absolutely still. This – this wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in real life. This kind of thing tonly happened in poetry and art - in fiction. Happy endings.

But the ring, when he reached out for it again, was real. And the tears on El’s face and the calluses on Peter’s hand as he slid the ring on Neal's finger – those were real, too. The tears and the calluses and the promises he couldn’t bear to listen to.

He’d written on other peoples’ bodies his entire life.

This was the first time that anyone had ever written back.

*

PB & EB & NC


End file.
